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Messages By: grandmashari

Pot does change attitudes

I can tell you that pot does change attitudes of the smokers. My daughter went from a quiet, self assured teenager with common sense to a smart mouthed, easily angered child the summer between 10 and 11th grade. My husband said he thought she was smoking pot. I didn't believe it. Wasn't until we had proof that I opened my eyes to that fact. When my youngest's behavior started changing, it didn't take me any convincing. I started searching his room and went as far as I could to get him straightened up, which was putting a CHINS action (child in need of supervision) on him which was nessessary because the guy who was supplying him with the pot, we (and the police) feel was grooming him for molestation. It was the best way to keep him away from my son. He has grown up to be a responsible, well adjusted young man, now with a wife and daughter of his own. He is glad we put such limits on him. One thing I don't understand is how when parents of their friends know how against I am of underage drinking and any drugs, why would they have parties at their house and not only allow the drinking but supply it and drink with them. I didn't find this out until my kids were grown, but after this show it seems it is still going on. Kids will be kids but it is up to the parents to raise them to be responisble, law abiding citizens and you can't do that if you are allowing them to break laws at 16!

Relationship Myths

I don't really know where to start? I have a troubled background filled with sexual abuse and raised by a mother who was more interested in living her life rather than raise me. This history left me with HUGE emotional scars, which at 32 I am very well aware of, maybe too much aware? I am now at a good place within myself and have a better perspective when inner turmoil raises it ugly head.

I have been married for almost 4 years and I want more than anything to be married and raise our children together, but he is emotionally removed. I am terrified to talk to him about ANYTHING because he is so good at playing the victim...If I tell him he's not spending enough time with the kids, I'm self-righteous...If I tell him I'm not happy he says I haven't been happy for years and it's all his fault! He has selective hearing, he hears me but does not listen to what I am saying. I told him I went to a couple of therapy sessions, he got so mad he said he wanted a divorce. I do not dare suggest therapy!!! Does anyone out there have any suggestions?

Personally I think his reactions show a way he is controlling the situation. The getting angry at your trying to get therapy shows that he doesn't want to lose the control he has over you. I think when he turns any talk to his fault is taking your feelings and putting them aside, then putting the attention on him. Stay with the therapy, even if he doesn't like it. It will give you confidence and healing that you need. Threats of divorice is another way of gaining control. It is emotional blackmail. What would he do if you said "you do what you think you need to, I am continuing with the counciling." When you say something like he isn't spending enough time with kids, maybe instead of accussing, you can say "wouldn't it be fun if you and the kids or all of you went to the park to play?" It stops his victim playing. When you tell him you aren't happy, state why you aren't happy and if he goes into the all his fault part, don't play into it. Just keep stating what it would is that you would like to change. "I am unhappy because I have no time for myself" Men are fixers so maybe if he knew what it was that needs to be fixed, he would try.

04/16 Drug Troubles

Welll as for smoking pot and it destroying your life....WRONG i agree with the person who wrtoe its up to the person who controls them on which way there life will turn out ME being a 21yrold holding 2 jobs working 7 days a week beendoing it for 9 months i have a car, insurance and rent that i pay every month i am a POT SMOKER im calm i dont make rational decisions im meek DRAMA FREE now and i work my ASS Off it hasnt made me a bad person im not in jail and im more patient and stress free and its the most natural Compared to these these other thing these kids get a hold of (INCLUDING DEADLY CIGGS< ALCOHOL AND PILLS which all are legal tooo!!! HMMM wonder why the govnt did that?) and its ALL IN YOUR HEAD...... MIND OVER MATTER YOU have to control your emotions and mind dont let it control you!!!!!!!!!! want to help make it legal and see it compared to alcholo all research go to www.safer.org

In Wyoming, Worker's comp gives breaks to those employers who give random drug tests to each of their employees. More and more businesses are going to this. So my questions to you are simple. If you didn't smoke pot and went to college and planned a career, you wouldn't have to work two jobs to get by, where is your plans for the future? Say you did have that career, what will you do if your employers start random drug testing employees? Will you lose everything you worked so hard for just to get high?

Picky Eaters

My 18 month granddaughter doesn't like vegetables and would spit them out even if they were mixed with some of her favorite foods. Once she gets a taste of something she doesn't like, she refuses to eat anything on her plate in fear she might not like the taste. I found that now she is old enough to help, she helps me cook dinner when she is here. I let her pour the corn or peas into the pan, put in the seasoning and while she isn't old enough to be close to the stove she stands on a chair on the other side of me while I cook on the stove. It is surprising how she eats her vegetables now, telling me "mmmm" the whole time she eats. Her eating habits have improved and she is more likely to try new things when she "helps" make them. I let her butter her bread for grilled cheese sandwiches with her own little knife that came in her dinnerware kit. We might have a bigger mess when we are done but as my mother in law use to tell me when cooking with my daughter "We aren't making messes, we are making memories"

Spanking

I don't think I would want others to spank my children because when I spank I know I will not go overboard. I heard once that the first swat is for the child, any after is for the parent's anger, fear or hurt. I would count to three and if they didn't listen, they chose the consequence which is one swat on the bottom. Grounding and time outs didn't work with my kids but a swat on the hind end did. They were good kids and well liked from everyone who met them. Making children missing meals, tying their hands together and using a board or belt is abusive. My parents used a belt when we were young and I didn't like it so when I had children that was one of the things I wouldn't allow. I would point out also that even though my siblings and I were spanked with a belt, not any of us are violent, incarcerated and three of the 4 gradutated high school, one is now a social worker with a bachlors in criminal science, two are Electricians who are partners with my husband in a company and I raised my children and worked as an assistant director of a day care, volunteered years with the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts and taught Sunday school and planned and taught Bible School while my kids were growing up. I know children who never were never spanked even when they really needed it who grew up to be selfish, horrible adults.

Picky Eaters

I have a 20 month old daughter that has been a difficult eater since about 8-9 months (couple of months after starting to spoon feed her). She has had her up & down moments, somedays making it Ok to spoon feed her and some other days crying and screaming and not allowing to put 1 spoonfull in her mouth.

Lately she is becoming so difficult that i cannot sit her in her high chair without her fussing and crying the second she sees me with that spoon. That includes yogurt that used to be her favorite meal time. Another thing I want to tell you is that she is 20 months old and has only 4 teeth in the bottom, one molar and 2 upper fron teeth and an upper molar. All her gums are swollen...

She will only accept the bottle so her brekfast consist of fruit, cereal, mild and egg yolk smoothie whereas her lunch is vegetables blended in beef/chicken concentrate - ONLY from the bottle though. I try the spoon and she screams... B/c I dont want her to go without eating I am obliged to put in in a bottle and .. of course she drinks it, at least most of the time.

She is NOT interested in table food, and hates when food touches her hands. She only does OK with cheerios, gold fish, plain bread and other cookies. The other day I was having a bagel with cream cheese and the second she accidently touched my cream cheese she screamed for me to clean her hands...

How do I get her interested in other foods but pureed or smoothies??

She literly never opens her mouth wide even on the good days when she'll let you feed her. Have you ever seen someone eat with her lips parted just a tiny bit???

Is this the strangest thing or what???

Thanks a Million for any advices.

Ahh weight wise and height wise she is OK, I think 80% or so where she should be.

Perhaps you should take her to a pediatric dentist to make sure her teeth aren't coming in sideways or have some gum troubles. My oldest son's eye teeth were coming in sideways and he had to have them guided in.

She may be having trouble eating if her gums are hurting. Before meals give her one of those plastic ice pops without opening it to numb them a little.

She is old enough to be feeding herself and if she doesn't eat it all, that is ok. Let her work with some soft finger foods like canned peaches or pears. I wouldn't give her the junk food without improving her eating habits first. She isn't going to starve if you don't offer them to her while she adjusts to eating healthy choices. My granddaughter doesn't like the food on her hands either. She is 19 months old and we just give her a napkin that she can wipe her hands on when she wants. Also the bottle is a easy feed, it doesn't help your case if she finds it much easier to drink the food in her bottle then to actually have to chew and feed herself. Give her the food and the spoon and let her learn to eat, even if it makes a huge mess.

05/14 "I'm Hot, You're Not"

It is always said that beauty is skin deep, these ladies prove that. I am overweight and although I don't think I am ugly, I am not a beauty either. I do believe that you have to like that person who looks back at you in the mirror and with hate or prejudice in your heart, I can't understand how you could truly like yourself. I also believe that when it is all said and done, your body will be bones and dust, no fat on it what so ever, no matter what size you are when you are alive. Your soul (personality comes through your soul) will live on forever and you choose, by your behavior and the way you treat others, if you will live forever in the Kingdom or in Hell.

I use to weigh 115 and I can tell you that now I am much more then that. I will also tell you that with age, my self confidence and self respect has grown with each experience I have been through. I do not have to fake my self confidence by cutting down others.

05/15 Psychic Dramas

I know that this was not directed at me, but I am going to respond to it anyway.

When you claim something the burden of proof is on you, not the person you are talking to, so actually no one else has to prove that what you are saying is logical, you have to prove that. So far you haven't. You've realted a lot of personal experiences, but once again, the arguement from personal experience proves nothing.

What you have proven is that you really, really want to believe that these things you claim happened have no natural cause. If most people were truly as frustrated as you seem to be with having 'supernatural' events happen in their home, they would have called in the media to show the whole world these events. To each their own, but becoming unhinged when people do not believe in the supernatural as you do is just plain unreasonable and childish.

Everyone is entitled to their beliefs. I know my husband doesn't believe in anything he hasn't seen for himself, he always says that about everything from UFO's to ghosts to God. I look at that as a closed mind which doesn't see what is in front of him, at least on believing in God. As far as spirits, I very much believe in them. I know it was a guardian angel who saved my granddaughter when she was just learning to roll over. She had a Fisher Price Aquarium on her crib and she rolled onto her belly, getting her head wedged between the aquarium and the mattress. My daughter in law heard a man over the baby montor say "Wake up!" She was startled awake and thought maybe she was dreaming it when she heard it right next to her bed... "WAKE UP!" She jumped from bed and ran into the room and found the baby face down in the mattress. When my grandfathers were on their death bed, both talked of seeing Jesus come to them, they died 17 years apart. My grandmother was gravely ill when she started talking to my grandfather who passed 35 years earlier. My other grandfather told my grandmother right before he died that he would see her soon, when she was startled by that he said "In 15 years". It was 15 years after he died that she died of a heart attack. These may not be proof to you, but they are to me. I always tell my kids "I would rather believe in God and heaven and find out when I die that there is no God, then to not believe in God and find out when I die that there is a God and I wasted my after life. Besides, believing in God gives you hope in bad times, helps you work through troubles and it certainly doesn't hurt having that foundation of faith and beliefs, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose. I mention God in this because Jesus is the most well known Spirit of all time.

05/15 Psychic Dramas

What exactly am I in denial about? Do you not find it
odd that even though so many people claim to have had supernatural experiences
that not one single human being has ever been able to replicate that experience
in a double blind scientific study in a laboratory? I find it to be very
telling.

Denial would infer that I had experienced something that I did not want to believe was true. Quite the contrary, if I were presented with scientific proof that such things occur then I would believe that they do based on rational thought processes. No such evidence has ever been presented to the scientific community at large, so there is simply nothing to be in denial about.

As for your experiences, you are using the argument from personal experience
as your justification that what you are relating is true. As I have
already covered in a previous response to you, there are many, many reasons
that people believe they are experiencing either psychic or supernatural phenomenon,
when actually they are not.

For example, someone in your house may have placed the wine glass where it was
placed, which is the most likely explanation. You could have done it
yourself in a fugue state and have no memory of it. If you say that you
actually saw it happen I would have only to suppose, and not to be unkind, but
I seriously would believe that you had fabricated the incident entirely.

Christmas trees fall, people knock them over, pets knock them over, hard
breezes or drafts could knock one over or it could have just been that it was
never very stable in its stand to begin with.

Shaving crème drawing on a bathroom mirror was done by a human in your house.

What you are doing is something called 'the worship of gaps'. It occurs
when one can not find an immediate explanation for an event and instead fills
in a supernatural explanation.

By chance did you call any local news crews to come film in your home in order to catch these things on film? Did you offer your home open to scientific inquiry in order to rule out any natural phenomena and trickery or did you simply accept the 'explanation' that these events were cause by something supernatural?

It's easy to take the most simple, available explanation, especially if it somethng that the individual wants to believe is true anyway. It is harder to be skeptical and scientific and probe for answers which concur with the laws of physics and science.

To be logical and reasonable, science is full of guesses and the "proof" often comes from working out those unreasonable thoughts which everyone thought they were crazy for believing, a good example is when they thought the world was flat until it was proved to be round. Had Christopher not had the courage to stand up for the unproven, where would we be? There is a lot of things out there that we don't know about yet. Look how many new planets they have found since the nine we grew up thinking was all. Look how much science has grown in Medicine. Can you believe some of the things they use to believe back then? The thing is, science is great and proof is nice to have, but just because you don't have the proof you can hold in your hand and see, doesn't mean it isn't so. As far as the way the brain works, that is great to know... how the soul works is even better to know!

05/29 The Sex Talk

It was a good show. I had to laugh at the kids since it reminded me of when I was pregnant with my daughter and my 3 year old niece asked "Aunt Shari, why did you eat that baby?" I said "I didn't eat the baby" She asked "well how did it get in your tummy?" I smiled over at my husband and said "Uncle Kevin put it there, ask him!" He looked like a deer caught in the headlights. It was priceless.

I didn't have a lot of trouble talking to my kids. When my oldest heard some not so nice words for women parts, I explained to him what we call it and why those words are degrading to women. When he turned 11 and asked his dad and his dad didn't know how to talk to him, I explained how important love is with sex and that you respect women. With my daughter I explained how she has the right to say no, and how important it is out of respect for herself to take it seriously and save it for someone worth her love. (I also said that to my oldest). My youngest surprised me when I found condoms in his laundry at the age 13. I didn't think to have that deep of talk with him that early, the others didn't show any interest in it at that age. I told him that while I am glad he knows to use condoms there is so much more to sex then that. I told him that besides the diseases he could get or pregnancy which could change his life forever, the fact that not many 13 year olds in love will stay together forever and the break ups hurt as it is, but when sex is involved then it hurts all that much more. I told him that sex isn't a game and that 13 year olds shouldn't be involved in that, even 16 year olds shouldn't be involved in having sex because the feelings it brings out and the pain it could cause one or both of them. I told him it is something special for two people who want to commit to each other for the rest of their lives.

I remember the "talk" my mom had with me. She said "don't sleep with someone who you don't want to wake up next to for the rest of your life"